HOW DO I BRING MYSELF TO THE EARTH

In my program of the Seminary of the Wild, we were given a writing prompt and 15 minutes to write on “How do I bring myself to the earth?”  As further background, some of you know that I am in the process of  “buying” a place in Putney Vermont, a cabin on 10.5 acres. Buying is such a strange verb as if anyone could own land.  Something much more like I’m spending money to be given the privilege to steward a particular piece of the earth.  And as if the land could ever understand that I alone amongst humans have this privilege; the individualism of the modern human species makes absolutely zero sense from an ecological perspective.  But I digress. 

Here’s what I wrote. As usual with this kind of journaling exercise, there’s no clean up of grammar, though I do clean up typos.

How do I bring my body to the earth, boy, one piece is listening to it, letting my body make decisions because it is more connected to the earth than my head is.  So where does the garden go in the new place?  Listen to the land, listen through my body, let my body choose. 

There’s a giving over in all of this, a surrendering to my body and to the land.  I long to surrender. I have struggled for so long, I have struggled and I am tired of holding myself separate.  It is hard to give up this struggle. It’s so so familiar. And I want to give it up, to give myself over to the earth, to lay down naked on the field in the warm sun, to smile at the land, all the creatures who inhabit her with me.  It’s really important to me that I deepen that connection.  Today walking in the snow covered landscape, it felt right to walk, felt right to feel the snow in my body because it is mid winter in Vermont and there should be snow on the ground. And it will feel right to let the sun fill my body in the summer and let the green growth fill my body in the spring, let my legs take me over the land, to get to know the land in the palms of my hand, in the boots of my shoes, maybe even barefoot, the trees, the squirrels, the birds.

I will never know the land to which I am moving as well as if I had moved there 20 years ago, or if I were more in my body and less cut off, or if I had more of a feel for the patterns of land beyond pasture.  And yet, in this phase of my life, I declare that I and my body belong to the land in its great flourishing of growth in the springtime, in the quiet of winter with snow on the ground, with the harvest of fall.  I am committed to being in love, to manifesting my love, however that looks, to grieve the years I didn’t have, to relish the years I do. May my belonging to the land be a blessing for the land, may she know the gentleness of my touch, my taking place as a human working with her, the power of the human and the humility that I cultivate that is too often lacking. I am in love with the land, and may I be blessed with many years to get to know her, to dance with her, to feed her, to make love with her, to be with her and to know her enjoyment and mine, for we are both body, we are both body.

I will start with my head, of course.  Asking what’s the plan, where do I put the garden, where do I put the carport, where do I plant the orchard trees, getting some human advice.  And I will listen to the land, I will listen to the land, for I have no wish to impose my will upon her.  I have no wish to impose my will upon her.  For why would I do that?  This is a partnership, and she will be there long after I am gone; I do not wish to leave her with scars that she will have to heal but with gentle memories that she will recall in the spring, summer, fall and winters in the future when I am only a distant memory and she will say, he was a good lover, a true lover, not perfect, but I cherish his memory and his memory is for a blessing.